Fringe 2011: Day 18

I am a fickle man. After my moaning and complaining of a few day’s back at my poor reviews, I received this yesterday from Three Weeks:

Which is all a bit bloody nice isn’t it? It’s so petty but that really was all I needed and now, as far as I’m concerned, my fringe is fine. I honestly couldn’t care what stars I get for the rest of the run, or who sees it, I can call it a four star show forever more. I realise that this is bonkers. Surely I shouldn’t be bothered by any of the reviews? Surely I should’ve re-read last year’s blogs where something very similar happened to me as well? Surely I’m over the whole fringe game by now? No, no clearly not. I have resigned myself to the fact that there are parts of life I just won’t grow up and this is one of them. Take that as a note Edinburgh Fringe, should you wish for me to be returning ever again, then I will need at least one four star review or I’ll have a huff and hide in my room till everyone goes away. Oh and if you could cut all the crusts of my sandwiches too. Thanks.

It is not just the review. Its also partly the fact that we are now two weeks in and I only have to perform my show 9 more times before I get to have a day off which is very exciting. Its so bad to wish time away but let’s be honest, my chest cough and sore throat aren’t going anywhere till I can stay in bed and not shout at a room full of people about how much I hate David Cameron. Oh, as a side note, Al Murray gave me a new remedy for said throat issues. Manuka honey and blackcurrant lozenges. Despite being the sort of sticky you’d only get if they made toffee out of superglue and thusly you end up eating half of the plastic packaging when finally giving up on unwrapping them, they seem to work. And they don’t taste like sheer hell. So so far, these are in the lead way above Sanderson’s which I have avoided since yesterday for fear its actually going past my throat and into my very soul.

I won’t spend another blog huffing and puffing about how much I want to do nothing for a day, so instead let me leave you with some small notes to do with days gone by:

- The Poetry Takeaway is the best thing in the world ever. Its by the Udderbelly and I highly recommend you swing by and get a custom made poem for your good selves.

- Humphrey Ker’s show is by far the best comedy show I’ve seen all fringe. If he doesn’t get nominated for something I will eat my own hat. With sauce of course. I’m not an idiot.

- Al Murray’s daughter is very good at sketch comedy.

- Yesterday a small boy in the audience at Comedy Club 4 Kids told Tom Allen that the best place to take a girl on a date was ‘the bushes’ and then ‘under the slide.’ Amazing.

- There are still tickets left for my show, which people seem to be enjoying. You can get them here:

TIERNAN DOUIEB VS THE WORLD

- the Haribo Super Mix advert is the worst thing I have ever seen in my life ever.

- My intro music for my show is Goodnight Lenin. They are awesome and via Twitter have found out I use their song and have now told me they will walk onstage to one of my jokes. I am more pleased about this than most things.

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Fringe 2011: Day 15 – Critics Schmitics

This blog is whiny and a tad self pitying. Sorry about this but its my blog and I’ll cry if I want to.

Reviews of my show are out, and they aren’t great. It’s bad enough waiting for something to appear so you can adorn your poster with symbols that mean nothing outside of Edinburgh, but when they arrive and don’t even provide you with that, its even worse. I am at no point pretending my show is anything other than worth three stars, but its pretty disheartening when you spend months working on something only to be told its merely average. Sure its possible to say that the words of one critic mean nothing, but its the resulting consequences that are more upsetting. For a start, you’ll only get national papers reviewing if you get 4-5 stars from other smaller publications first. Then you’ll only sell tickets if you have 4-5 stars to plaster on posters and flyers, and you’ll only gain a buzz from selling lots of tickets and having those stars and that will result in you gaining telly types to come and watch. If however, like my show, you only get threes, generally the whole show goes unnoticed by everyone and once again I end up owing £5-6k from Edinburgh, paying it back over the next 12 months and once again being broke. Bah.

My two reviews are:

THE SCOTSMAN

and

BROADWAY BABY

Now I’m sure its advised not to do this, and to rise above such things, but I feel I should respond to some of what’s been said in these reviews. Jay, who reviewed me for the Scotsman is a) a lovely bloke, b) a good journalist and c) has already said he doesn’t know how his review has been edited and that his comment on me not mentioning the massacre (which I do and did) was more that I didn’t mention it enough. Fair enough, though the killer’s motives don’t fit into the theme of the rest of the show and much like with everything, its hard when you only have an hour to cram everything in. But yeah, perhaps I should say more about it. He does also mention my ending about storming parliament as misguided, but its not the ending, it has a disclaimer and then we end properly. So there. Anyway, I won’t say more, because as I said, Jay’s ace.

But the Broadway Baby one made me actually annoyed. There is really nothing quite as hurtful as being called ‘average’ in terms of comedy, not least when someone has based this on your first 15 minutes of show rather than the rest of it. I’m just very tired of hearing that because I do nice comedy that its ‘safe’. What do I have to do to gain the extra star? If it means becoming overly aggressive, crude, misogynistic or something like that then I’m really happy on three. Being friendly and being safe are two different things. All in all I’m either going to have to return to Edinburgh with a show called ‘Tiernan Douieb has Just Killed A Man’ or not return at all. The latter seems far more preferable at the moment.

Yes I know I should read them, and yes its all just one person’s opinion, but sadly other people’s opinions don’t get printed and left on the internet for years to come. Its my day off today, which still means I have to do one show which is a shame. Could very much do with trundling off out of the city for a while. Bloody Edinburgh. Every bloody year.

 

On the plus side, in the Scotsman today there is a huge picture of me and Tim Fitzhigham looking stupid alongside this lovely article:

HEROIC ACTS – EXPLORATION ON THE FRINGE

 

 

 

 

Fringe 2011: Day 14

The Edinburgh Rally. Not a car race, far from it in fact, but more a tactic used by many a festival stalwart, wherein a text, tweet and Facebook message is shunted around all those that you know may help a friend in need to draw a crowd on an otherwise dead day. I have never ever used this before but often receive them from people saying that a reviewer is in or some other big occurrence. I will always try and help but this year I have been generally rubbish at doing so and its very bad form considering how today, on my first usage of such a system, the crowds came out in force. Due to a screw up in the Edinburgh Fringe programme – and let’s face it, my lack of TV appearances or profile – I had a whole zero people booked in to see my show today. This in itself is the opposite of fun. However when that is combined with the fact that a reviewer (who has in the past not looked on me kindly) was going to be in as well as a film crew recording the whole show, my day started off in a panic. Well that’s not true. It started with an egg and marmite muffin, which is a brilliant way to go, but once that had been digested, figures had been discussed and the reality of the situation has hit me in the face, the combined power of yolk and yeast in awesome dough had well worn out and dissipated into the mere memory of my gut.

So a tweet went out, a humble text sent and a rather distressed call to my agent made, all the while me praying I didn’t have to cancel the show. I didn’t at all. Thanks to many a brilliant comic and a Twitter follower my message was resent over and over again, while several responded to my text message and arrived in force leaving me with a really lovely and packed room of brilliant people. And a reviewer. And a film crew who got the sort of recording I could only dream of. Huzzah! What with my show being strong the message of unity and solidarity it felt very much like it had all pulled through. Us comic types can properly stick together like glue when necessary, yes indeed. Now all I need is for my reviews not to be shit and to start coming out and we should be on a roll, only a week and a bit in. Which yes, is later than others. Bah. Still day off tomorrow, from two of my three shows, so I can rest the vocal tones, switch off my mind from political ramblings and hope I needn’t get texting and tweeting everyone again on Wednesday when I return. The Edinburgh rally much like antibiotics, mustn’t be overused. No siree.

 

Last bit of waffle, me and Tim’s ‘Adventurer’s Club – Great Arctic Caper’ got a lovely review in the Stage today despite it being merely an hour of bonkers nonsense. The reviewer, who was an awesome elderly gent on two crutches an donning a dear stalker hat which made him look like a prime member of our Adventurer’s Club, has insisted on calling me ‘Tiern’. I have no idea why. Enjoy reading that over and over again whilst sniggering to yourself.

THE STAGE – ADVENTURER’S CLUB REVIEW 

Fringe 2011: Day Three

Here we are then. The morning of the day of the first show of my third solo show. That’s a lot of numbers right there and if you add them all up you get a nervous Tiernan. Its bizarre how really, there is no need to be worried about today, and yet, despite all self-reasoning I’m still shuffling around my room wondering what to do with myself until I get onto the stage at 1.45 today. The show is totally in my head and yet I worry I’ll forget it. It’s worked on countless audiences now yet I’m terrified no one will laugh. I’ve been told the whole thing makes sense and works, yet I’m scared its a rambling hour of yawn. Every year Edinburgh does this to me. Any other show, any other place and any other gig I’m now fully confident that I can walk on stage and play it properly. Apart from here. This little bubble of rainy Scotchness seems to reduce me back to being the open spot I was in 2004. It is a stupid place.

Why does it do that? Well I like to pretend to myself – and this year I have been more convincing than most – that I am past caring about what reviewers think. I’m no longer bothered about the opportunities Edinburgh may hold and use it solely as a place to say what I want to, as a platform to craft my own abilities. I say all that, but it’s all huge kangaroo balls. Mahoosive marsupial nut sacks. I’m as worried as ever about finding out someone’s given me two stars because I didn’t elaborate on my ‘dragon’ joke enough, despite them not realising that to do something like that would change the entire nature of the show, which isn’t what I want to do. I don’t want to see the review (and this reviewer is already booked into to see my show unfortunately) that doesn’t say at all what they thought of it all, but instead just gives away the ending, several punchlines and hands over a meagre three stars.

I know this all sounds grumpy, I’m purely giving you a tiny insight into the spakky mind of a comedian on day one. I will bounce out of today’s show, regardless of how it went, feeling a whole lot better about it all. Honestly, should my venue explode or all the audience members turn into trolls or a witch curse me so I can’t say any words or other such terrible possible happenings, once that hour is over, show one will still be out of the way and all will be fine.

On a last note, I went to see Chris Cox’s excellent show last night. Having chatted with Chris about his show a few weeks back in his living room, I was properly blown away by how awesome some of the tricks he’d previously explained to me were when realised. A really great premise for a show, wonderfully performed and with trickery that can only suggest he’s an evil warlock. Highly recommended.

20 Questions

With the build up to the Edinburgh fringe us comedian types have to fill in a lot of answers to questions from all sorts of Festival publications and websites. In the last few days I’ve had to write blurb about my favourite place to read in Edinburgh alongside several questions about if my show was a song what song would it be. My show isn’t a song. It’s a show. That’s the difference between shows and songs. Yes you get musical shows, yes you could listen to a show on your iPod, but its a different construct to a song and usually much longer and more sophisticated. Believe me, if I could get away with writing just a song for Edinburgh and play it over and over again for an hour then goddamit I would. I mean, I probably could do that, its the getting away with it I’d be uncertain of. And where my favourite place to read in Edinburgh is? What my answer should have been is ‘DO YOU THINK I HAVE ANY FUCKING TIME TO READ DURING THE FESTIVAL ASIDE FROM YOUR POORLY WRITTEN REVIEWS THAT WILL PROBABLY BE SLATING ME ANYWAY IN WHICH CASE THE ONLY PLACE TO READ THEM IS THE BAR WHERE I CAN DROWN MY SORROWS AT ANOTHER FAILED YEAR AND £6k OF LOSSES? HUH?’ I didn’t. I mentioned a coffee shop I really like.

What they should do though, ultimately, is ask more interesting questions. There are lots of great questions out there and I’d be very happy to try and answer many of them. Questions about the world, about the universe, about me, about you, about science or animals or even, like in this video, socks throughout time:

CONVERSATIONS WITH BERT PART 1

CONVERSATIONS WITH BERT PART 2

 

Bert asks the best questions. That’s all I want. To be asked things like that. Why is the duck billed platypus? Who stole the cookie in the cookie jar? If Dave is travelling at 12 miles an hour and Susan is travelling at 367 miles per hour, who has superpowers and who has a bike? See? I’ve made those up on the spot and at no point did my mind falter and try and say a show is a song or a film is a novel. Ok, so the last one can happen. But you know what I mean. I just want my question answering ability to be tested. I am like the Guru of shit stupid answers and if I’m reduced to just saying what song my show is a small dent appears in my psyche that may never be fixed. Up in Edinburgh I shall be repeatedly taking questions via this site – sometimes by myself, sometimes with other comics – please ask me exciting things. Thanks:

TIERNAN TAKES QUESTIONS

And if you do want to see what song my show is like, see here:

GET COMEDY QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS